Rock Chalk, Jayhawk KU!

This past Saturday I got the chance to attend my first ever KU basketball game! I have been a fan since I was a wee little one and had never seen them play in person nor had I ever been to Allen Fieldhouse. It was AWESOME!!! We started the day by meeting at a friend's house at 7:45 am. On a Saturday?! The Hawks are worth it though. We headed out early because the game started at 1 pm and we needed to get the early to stand in line to get good seats, we had GA seats. We got to Allen Fieldhouse at about 11 am and there was quite the line. It was windy and a bit chilly but not as bad it could have been for a February day.

The line to get into Allen Fieldhouse

Trying to stay warm

We were lucky and didn't stand outside for too long before they started letting people in. We made our way in and it is really cool inside! It's like a Jayhawk Hall of Fame in there! As we rushed past all of the memorabilia to get seats I kept thinking, "Man! I want to look around." Well, lucky for me one of the girls with us wanted to go look around too so after we got our seats we wandered around looking at stuff and taking photos. We even got to get a close up of the players warming up and them running back to the locker room.

Warming up before the game

Part of the original court

The Championship trophy!!!

 

So after looking around and waiting a little longer the game finally started but not before the fight song and Rock Chalk Chant. I love KU's Chant. It is sort of chilling and eerie but really cool. Now, when the fight song started everyone put their arms around each other and started singing. I got to know the guy sitting next to me very well. ;-) As I was listening and trying to sing along I noticed that I had heard the tune for their fight song before. I think it is in the movie Dirty Dancing. The University of Kansas has been around a LOT longer than that movie has but it made me laugh. I will let you judge for yourself.

Do you see it? I do. I kept thinking about that scene in the movie the rest of the fight song. It made it easier to sing the song because I have never heard the KU fight song but I knew the tune. So, after the fight song and chant they announced the teams. Tradition at KU is that when the opposing team is announce you hold up a newspaper and rustle it so you can't see or hear them being announced. Then when they are finished you rip up your paper and throw it into the air. Then when they announce KU's team your cheer and throw ripped up paper into the air after every player is announced. We were covered head to toe with newspaper! It was awesome.

The game was great! They won 89-63 and throughout the game they kept giving us updates on who was winning in other games and UNL kicked UT's butt!!! Something that needed to happen a LONG time ago. UT is ranked #2 and UNL isn't even ranked, which makes it even better! When they first put the scores up and we got our first glimpse at the score the arena erupted in cheers. Can you tell we all HATE Texas? Needless to say it was a great way to end a fantastic day! :-D

Baby Jay...isn't he cute?!